How Much Does God Really Know? Is He Omniscient?
Is God omniscient? Does God know absolutely everything? Stephen March discusses God’s omniscience and its importance for us today.
The Omniscience of God
Let’s talk about the omniscience of God, that is that God knows all things, and what does that really mean for us.
Let’s specifically focus on God’s perfect and full knowledge of His creation more importantly, of us humans. In another post I’ll address some of the ideas of God’s foreknowledge of all things and how that relates to our free will, which is another aspect of God’s omniscient nature, but to look at both of these in one post is way too much.
God’s Omnipresence
God created the world, and everything in it. Because God is also omnipresent, which means God is everywhere, it is understandable that nothing happens in this world that he doesn’t know about. Jesus even confirmed this in Matthew 10:29 when he said that not even a single sparrow would fall to the ground without the Father knowing. Colossians 1:17 tells us that all things in creation are held together by the Lord.
Verses About God’s Omniscience
Perhaps the best place in the Bible we can look to and learn about God’s perfect knowledge of us is Psalm 139. The first four verses read:
O Lord, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.
In Jeremiah 1 God spoke to the prophet and said
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you”
One last one, Hebrews 4:13 says
“And no creature is hidden from His sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of Him to whom we must give an account.”
These all become very important verses to us as they remind us that there are no secrets with God.
Believing in God’s Omnipresence
Naturally, if we believe in God and His omnipresence, we would easily be able to understand that if we commit sin He would see it and know about it. But God also knows the intentions of our hearts, and our thoughts, both that we think toward one another and toward Him. That’s the negative aspect of this truth. In Genesis 6:5, just before the great flood, it reads
“The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”
Romans 2:16 says
“on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.”
This is scary stuff, and while I don’t want to linger on these thoughts, it needs to be mentioned that God knows everything about us.
The Positive Side of Omniscience
Now for the positive side of the omniscience of God; He knows everything about us. He knows how we are hurting, He knows when we are trying our best but maybe coming up short, He knows what brings us joy. Above all, He knows everything that we need. We can look at His understanding of us as a scary thing based on all the negatives, but really, what far outweighs all of that is that the reason God has chosen to know everything about us is because He loves us so much. More than that, He wants to provide us with all that we need, if we’ll let Him. In 2 Corinthians 1 Paul calls Him the “God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our afflictions or struggles.”
God Still Loves Us
God knows all things about us, and despite our sin, He still loves us. He knows where our sin will take us, to our destruction. He knows that we don’t have the ability to save ourselves, so He sent His Son, Jesus to pay the price for our sin, and when He did that He offered to all of us everything we need, eternal life in Christ, free from the penalty of our sin. He also promises to never leave us or forsake us (Hebrews 13:5), to be the God of all comforts to us, because He wants us to know Him, and to know His Son Jesus Christ.
Receiving the Holy Spirit
If we trust in Jesus, we receive the Holy Spirit, and if we continue to rely on Jesus for all things, because He knows us so well, He knows exactly what we need and when we need it. Romans 8:32 reminds us that
“He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things.”
If you would like to know more about God’s good desire for your life, please contact us. You can do so by email to mail@fbhinternational.com or by phone at 1-800-567-1218.
Stephen March
Stephen March is the President of FBH International and HopeStreamRadio. He graduated from the Broadcasting Program at Niagara College in 2001, and has previously worked in television production and post-production. Stephen lives in St. Catharines, Ontario, with his wife Corinne and their four children.
Read and hear more from Stephen March on his contributor’s page. Stephen currently has 5 Programs on HopeStreamRadio:
- Please Forgive Me
- Isolation Chronicles
- Faith By Hearing – The Twelve
- Bibles and Baseball
- Bible Tech Talk
More Podcasts Below:
More Blogs
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Mountains – gorkhe1980
Woman at Beach – Pexels
Smiling Woman – nastya_gepp
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